made, it comes as a surprise to learn how much his household furniture and the objects and utensils he daily makes use of are indebted to the artistic sense of the persons who designed them for whatever beauty of form or adaptation to end they may possess.

For the lack of any proper comprehension of art on the part of the people at large, Mr. Ives holds many of our so-called art schools to a great extent responsible. "They have slighted the applied arts, looked down upon the craftsman," and "have trained a multitude of eager students to only paint pictures that few men want and fewer buy;" they have held themselves aloof from the many. This is not the case in countries where art is taught in the proper spirit, and should not be so here.

A strong plea is made for more art in our common schools, as being what is needed, rather than more art schools. Only by giving one generation of school children art instruction through the whole common school course can a proper foundation for a general appreciation of art be laid. The school museum of art is one of the principal agencies to this end that Mr. Ives suggests. The children should not be trained as artists, but taught to appreciate beauty, and in some degree to produce it.

An account is given of the museum extension undertaken some years ago by the St. Louis School and Museum. This work took the form of circulating collections of reproductions of masterpieces, by means of which opportunity to study art was placed before thousands who could not travel to the museum. These collections were circulated for years throughout the West, being exhibited in schoolhouses and halls, and lectures were given which the exhibits served to illustrate.

Notice should be taken of the special Saturday and holiday classes conducted by certain art schools and museums for the benefit of public school teachers, in connection with which special collections have been installed. The Brooklyn Institute of Arts and Sciences has done good work of this character. Special lectures and classes for workingmen constitute another feature of the attempt to popularize art. Sunday morning lectures for mechanics in the galleries of the St. Louis Museum, "the objects of applied arts being used for illustration, have been well attended and influential in improving local standards of workmanship in certain directions, notably in wrought-iron work." That the introduction of these various forms of art educational work may have a beneficial effect upon the industries of a nation is well attested by the experience of other countries. The practical results of the English system, having its center at the well-known South Kensington Museum, have served to stimulate efforts in this direction over a large part of the continent of Europe, which have been attended with such success that Germany, Belgium, and Holland

have reaped rich rewards through the practical application of the principles of art in designing industrial objects of every character.

Mr. Ives classifies institutions and other agencies for art education in the United States under five heads, as follows:

1. Museums or galleries of art apart from art schools, for the display of works of art to visitors.

2. Schools of instruction apart from museums or galleries, where technical instruction is given to professional students.

3. Museums combined with schools. In these instruction is given not only to regular students, but to the public, by lectures before the objects. The Art Museum and Museum School of Boston are cited as examples.

4. A fourth type, and one which is perhaps the most effective, is the combined school and museum established as an integral part of a liberal university. The Yale Art School, the art department of Syracuse University, and the St. Louis School and Museum of Art are of this class.

5. In a fifth group are included societies, clubs, and other organized agencies which work for art education.

It is in the West that there has been the greatest development of the system of combining in one institution the educational work for the general public and that for students. The Chicago Art Institute, which is conducted on this system, is mentioned as having especially influenced the people of its home city and the neighboring country.

The great progress which has been made in recent times in utilizing the forces of nature in the service of man has given rise to a multitude of new machines, tools, utensils, and objects of all kinds which have been designed primarily from a purely mechanical point of view. It is the study of art educators of the present day to give to all these productions whatever added value may be attached to them from being objects of beauty as well as of utility. "I can not see," says Mr. Ives, "why the harvesting machine need in itself be a less interesting or beautiful thing than the reaper's sickle" which it has supplanted. He explains how William Morris and his collaborators were dominated by a similar thought when they effected in England the industrial revolution which has had so great an influence on this country, as well as Europe. Cardinal Wiseman contributed to the same movement in his epoch-making lecture of some fifty years ago, in which he endeavored to show that the arts of design and the arts of production are inseparably connected.

That art plays an important part in promoting industrial development is strikingly illustrated in the case of France, and in the even more notable industrial advance of Germany. The great national prosperity of France was attributed by a German minister of commerce to the instruction given in trade and other schools and applied

by their students to industrial production, and it was due largely to his initiative that a similar system was introduced into Germany, with results that are a matter of common knowledge. The "Bank of England chair" and the Morris patterns for fabrics also furnish illustrations of the influence of art upon industrial production. For further evidence Mr. Ives quotes examples from a paper entitled "Art education the true industrial education," by the Honorable W. T. Harris, who emphasizes in particular the change that was wrought in the manufacturing industry of England by transforming the workman from an artisan pure and simple into an artist.

CURRENT TOPICS.

Chapter XI contains summarized statements on certain subjects of current interest which are discussed from year to year in the Commissioner's Annual Report. The table giving the statutory provisions of the various States relating to compulsory school attendance and child labor has been revised so as to embody recent legislation, including two comprehensive measures of importance, viz., the child-labor laws of Georgia and Iowa. In Georgia it is forbidden after August 1, 1906, to employ children under 10 years of age in any manufacturing establishment under any circumstances. On the 1st of January, 1907, this limit will be raised to 12 years, except in certain specified cases where the earnings of a child are needed for his own or his parents' support. Moreover, after January 1, 1908, a specified degree of education or length of school attendance will be exacted up to the age of 18 as a condition of employment. The Iowa law is more comprehensive and forbids the employment of children under 14 in mines, manufacturing establishments, shops, laundries, elevators, etc. Both of these laws, in addition, restrict the hours of labor of children. Kentucky and New York have, by amplifying the provisions of existing laws, further restricted the labor of children, and Massachusetts has prescribed a standard for those who are required to be able to read and write as a condition of employment.

In the District of Columbia the annual period of required school attendance has been extended so as to include the full school term. Of the 36 States and Territories now having compulsory-attendance laws, 25 require the children subject to them to attend whenever the schools are in session, and in one other (Kentucky) this provision is in force in cities. The practice of requiring attendance through the entire school term has grown up within a very few years and bids fair to become in time the settled policy of all the States having compulsory-attendance laws.

From the statistics relating to religious exercises in the public schools, in the same chapter, it appears that out of 1,098 cities reported religious exercises are forbidden in 162 and permitted in 936; such

exercises are actually conducted in 830, or something more than threefourths of the whole; and in 818 the exercises include reading from the Bible. It is interesting to observe to how much greater a degree this custom prevails in the Eastern as compared with the Central and Western States. In the two eastern divisions (North and South Atlantic) religious exercises are conducted in 478 out of 528 cities, or 90.5 per cent; in the North and South Central and Western divisions. in 352 out of 570 cities, or 61.7 per cent. In the Western division alone, the percentage is only 13.6. In the same division religious exercises are specifically prohibited in 49 cities out of 66, or about three-fourths.

The table in Chapter XI, giving an abstract of the regulations relating to corporal punishment in cities of 100,000 inhabitants and over, is worthy of notice. Of the 39 cities included in this table corporal punishment is unqualifiedly forbidden in 9, is confined to grades below the high school in 4 others, and is forbidden in the case of girls in 3. In those cities in which it is at all tolerated it may be inflicted only under special circumstances, and the practice of it is so hedged about with precautionary measures that it is probably resorted to but rarely.

INSTRUCTION IN FORESTRY.

With the adoption of a more settled policy of forest preservation on the part of the National Government and of the State governments, there has arisen the need of a body of trained experts in the scientific administration of forest reservations. This want a considerable number of higher institutions have from time to time endeavored to meet by the extension of their curricula so as to include some instruction in forestry or by the establishment of special forestry courses. A list of these institutions is given in Chapter XII, together with the number of years occupied by the course in each case and the time devoted to the different branches of the subject. Of the 44 institutions in which instruction in forestry is given, a large majority-37 in all—are agricultural and mechanical colleges established under the land-grant act of 1862. In most of these the instruction is given in connection with existing courses in agriculture or horticulture; there are 6 institutions, however-5 State universities and 1 agricultural college-that have full four-year undergraduate courses in forestry, and 2, Yale University and the University of Michigan, have graduate courses for advanced students who have had a thorough preparatory training in the underlying sciences. As a result of the efforts of these institutions, there should soon be available for the service of the Federal and State governments and of private corporations an adequate number of trained foresters, such as have long existed in Germany and France, skilled in forest management and in utilizing our forest resources to the best advantage.

THE AMERICAN SYSTEM OF AGRICULTURAL EDUCATION.

Chapter XII also contains a brief but comprehensive statement of the different agencies which collectively form what may be termed the "American system of agricultural education and research." This statement has been prepared by Dr. A. C. True, director of the Office of Experiment Stations of the United States Department of Agriculture.

Following the historical sketch which prefaces the paper, the various classes of instrumentalities and institutions which provide agricultural education are taken up in turn, beginning with the Department of Agriculture and the agricultural experiment stations, which Doctor True places at the head of the system. These constitute, so to speak, the university department for advanced study and the discovery and dissemination of new truths. Next in order come the agricultural colleges, mostly endowed with the national grant of lands, and nearly all having a course of four years or more. These vary much in their courses and entrance requirements. In some cases students are admitted directly from the elementary schools. The tendency, however, is to raise the standard of entrance to the level of that of the liberal courses in high-grade colleges. As the number of students and the income of these institutions increase, the tendency to differentiate and to offer groups of electives shows itself, resulting in the organization of special faculties and of courses in horticulture, animal industry,

etc.

Short and special courses are also offered by 44 of these institutions to students who are unable to complete a full college course.

The agricultural high school forms Doctor True's third class, and he reviews briefly the institutions of this grade existing at the date of his writing. The system of Alabama is especially noteworthy. The movement for the establishment of central (county or township) high schools, in which agricultural education is to be a prominent feature, is very definitely pronounced, especially in the South and West, and the future of these institutions is full of promise.

In the elementary schools, agricultural education appears under a variety of aspects, which are briefly noted in the paper under consideration. They may be classed under the heads of nature study, school-garden work (including the ornamentation of school grounds and houses), lecture courses, etc.

EDUCATIONAL REFORM IN CHINA.

The fundamental transformation which the whole educational system of China is now undergoing furnishes a valuable study in the development of human institutions. We see here an elaborate and artificial mechanism for mental and moral training, which has come

ED 1905 VOL 1-3